There’s a leadership change coming to JetBlue, though don’t expect that a whole lot will change at the airline (for better or worse)…
Continue reading: JetBlue Appoints New CEO, As Robin Hayes Retires
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Colleen Barrett was the President of Southwest Airlines in 2001. She may be the first.
Gotta love the first female Jetblue CEO end up being their most incompetent one.
She has done a *horrible* job when it comes to operational reliability and it is scaring away the premium customers that Jetblue should be earning bank from.
Good luck to her. She has a very difficult job ahead, in either way of an outcome of the litigation.
JetBlue needs to solidly their performance. First and foremost. While JetBlue is a “nice” airline once you are in the air, they need to professionalize the IT, their customer service and operational support.
I can only imagine how many consultants they would need to help with the spirit merger. Good thing so many consultants are sitting it their backyard, nyc!!
Placing Johanna in charge is BY FAR the worst personnel decision I have seen a board make since Doug Parker. She is a lawyer (Smisek was awesome) and as smart as she is, she lacks tact and accountability required to run an airline.
An open letter to Ms Johanna:
- may want to open a lounge in BOS or JFK to garner favor with the Mint crowd
- need to clean up your act concerning reliability...at one point one in 5 flight were cancelled for my outlying town
- appreciate the Euro foot print, but connections from my town are god awful to non-existent
- there's more to life than NYC, BOS, FLL, and LAX.....NK was to fill that void, time will tell
- should the NK acquisition go thru, need to hit the ground RUNNING; every moment of inertia is a million dollars down the drain
- should you seen an opportunity (ie: DL filling the void in Austin as AA retreats), be ready to pounce. You’ve got some smaller jets to test the waters
- make sure those in the C-Suite are less distracted with the strike point of their stock options and more focused on pressing the flesh of those shoveling the coal. Employees emulate the message transmitted by senior leadership
- remember, you provide a service…make sure it’s better and more consistent than what’s offered by others. If not, the others will eat your lunch and you'll end up in chancellery court begging for relief
Good Luck!!
Because of my size, I have spent more than 10 years buying an extra seat when I fly. My offspring settled in NYC and I live in Northern CA so fly out of Sacramento. Prior to 2018, I did the trip at least 3X a year, but after that, I made as many as 10 trips per year as I had a grandson born. With the exception of COVID year, I bought dozens of extra seats.
When I flew Frontier Airlines from Sac to Seattle several times in 2021, I became aware of two airport fees on tickets that ARE NOT PAID FOR BY THE AIRLINES on extra seats. My extra seat tickets were about $20 cheaper than my actual seat.
This made me aware that JetBlue had overcharged me by similar amount everytime I flew with them.
I approached JetBlue and they insist they pay those 2 fees for my extra seat. I can't image that other airlines are telling me the opposite and they are cheating themselves out of my money.
Come on JetBlue- I am now choosing to fly Southwest because of their Customer of Size policy. I was a loyal JetBlue customer having taken several dozen of flights in the last 10 years and actually prefer the non-stop flights from Sac to NYC and back. But I can't afford it.
should you seen an opportunity (ie: DL filling the void in Austin as AA retreats)
Remember that B6 tried to build up AUS before AA or DL did.
Not long ago, they had service to both costs, with connections available in AUS. Didn't last.
As you yourself just said, Colleen was President, but never CEO.
Shame, as she was far more competent.
Love JetBlue, but their network for those not living in proximity to the east coast, is just not practical.
Should the NK merger go thru, B6 will have overlap (excess capacity). B6 covers the east coast and NK will provide a midwest concentration. Even if the AUS scheme failed, a competitor's weakness is your opportunity. Ms Johanna needs to grow the footprint to justify the $3B dropped on the lap of the NK stockholders. Europe can only pick up so much slack.